Jubilee Hitchhiker (149 page)

Sherry remembers Richard lying on the bed in the Doss guest room “with his nose bandaged up.” She sat in a chair facing Brautigan while he read her the stories recently written in Japan in a funny nasal voice. Sherry's friend Yuri Nishiyama had told her that Richard's nose was broken at The Cradle in Tokyo when he asked a young musician, “a really lousy singer,” to knock it off and the Japanese troubadour smashed his guitar into Brautigan's face.

Richard received the page proofs for
Dreaming of Babylon
at the Doss household. Sam Lawrence asked Brautigan to also send him the descriptive copy for
Babylon
's inside dust jacket flaps. Richard called Don Carpenter, one of several trusted “ghost editors,” for help. “You have to
write the praise about yourself,” Carpenter said. “The trick is to get a friend to do it. Then you edit it as best you can.” Don proofread every book after
In Watermelon Sugar
. “Which should it be, one word or two? Is it hyphenated? Is this a colon or a semicolon? He went over everything, time and time again.” Carpenter came to Brautigan's aid again on
Babylon
. “The wild praise in the back of the book was written by me,” he said. “I could say all those things because I believed them.”

During his brief stay with the Dosses, Brautigan continued heading out nightly to favorite haunts in North Beach: Enrico's, Specs', and Vanessi's. Specs' (which opened in 1968) had a long, storied history. Until 1949, when the previous owner, Henri Lenoir, moved across Columbus to start Vesuvio Café, Specs' was called 12 Adler Place. Herb Caen, Barnaby Conrad, and Kenneth Patchen all hung out there in the years after WWII. Alcohol provided Richard an introduction to total barroom strangers. One evening, after a chance meeting at Specs', Brautigan brought his momentary new best friend back with him to 1331 Greenwich Street.

The next morning, Dr. John Doss, always the first in the family to rise, came downstairs to the kitchen to make breakfast. He was astonished on discovering Brautigan “with some Swedish poet sitting at the kitchen table with two or three bottles of whiskey out there and tumblers.” The pair were still drinking and yammering at each other “in this incomprehensible language” of their own invention. To Dr. Doss, it seemed like a “mythic, shamanistic confrontation.” He had no idea “what the hell was going on.”

Deep in his heart, Richard knew such louche behavior was not conducive to lasting friendships and set about looking for a place to live. While Brautigan wandered about North Beach looking at real estate listings with Jack Thibeau and Tony Dingman, they strolled down Grant Avenue in search of refreshment. Tony “jumped out in front of Richard” without a word, and “started ripping matches one at a time out of a matchbook.” Dingman lit them and tossed each burning match into the air. “Just this little fireworks of matches,” Thibeau recalled.

“Pyrotonia,” quipped Richard.

Brautigan's good humor stemmed from Akiko's impending arrival. He happily told all his friends about her, describing her grace and classic beauty. “The only time I ever saw him really happy, like a kid would be happy, I mean really excited and delirious,” said Ward Dunham, the bartender at Enrico's, “was when Aki was going to come here from Japan. That was the happiest I ever saw him.”

Effusive with joy, Richard paid a call on Marcia Clay in her spacious new apartment/studio on Stockton Street. He wasted no time before telling her about meeting Akiko. Marcia thought his first descriptions of Aki “already mythological.” Brautigan's fiancée was not only “incredibly beautiful” but very intelligent and best of all familiar with his work. Richard told Marcia about the evening Aki first visited him at the Keio Plaza. “And, of course, I fell in love with her,” he said.

It didn't take long for Brautigan to find a new apartment with “a sweeping view” on Telegraph Hill at 1349 Kearny, between Union and Green Streets, just a block away from where he'd lived with Valerie Estes in the late sixties and not far from his previous digs on Union. With a large overhanging bay window, Richard's new sun-filled apartment stood on the second floor of a small two-story duplex. Brautigan's rent was $525 a month. The convenient location provided another easy stroll down to Enrico's, Vanessi's and Chinatown. As soon as he was comfortably settled in, Richard sent for Akiko, who had quit her job at Sony. She arrived around the end of July and
stayed a little more than three weeks. “And, he said, ‘I'll introduce you to all my friends which is much better than me,'” Aki recalled. “And this was true.”

Among the first to visit were Ed and Jennifer Dorn, who by chance lived in an apartment directly across Kearny Street from Brautigan. Richard invited them over. Jenny observed that the couple “appeared to be very happy, and Richard was more than ever tiptoeing around and using quaint Japanese mannerisms.” Akiko struck her as “quite beautiful.” Brautigan had his new love serve tea and read them poetry in her native tongue.

Shortly after her arrival, Richard brought Aki over to 1851 Stockton Street to meet Marcia Clay. Brautigan prepared Clay for the meeting with an “avuncular” phone call. Concerned that Akiko knew no one in America, Richard asked Marcia to become her companion. She considered it “an appointed friendship: YOU WILL BE MY WIFE'S BEST FRIEND, an edict à la Richard.” Brautigan described Aki's “friendless plight” with a touching concern bordering on pity. With this in mind, Clay “was surprised to see a buoyant, bright-eyed, sure-footed young beauty enter my place that day.” Akiko wore a pleated, patterned skirt, patent leather shoes, and white knee socks. She carried a tiny lettered Japanese handbag. “A living doll,” Marcia thought.

“Smug and smiling,” Richard sat back watching them interact, very pleased with himself. Marcia and Aki hit it off immediately, and their friendship, still strong today, lasted decades longer than Brautigan's brief relationship with his Japanese fantasy.

Richard proudly escorted Akiko to all his favorite places, Enrico's and Vanessi's and “the little Japanese breakfast place on Columbus,” where friends gathered to eat and drink. Brautigan's bride-to-be met them all. The couple enjoyed strolling through the Chinese markets on Stockton Street. “Chinatown is his favorite place to walk in the morning,” Aki said. Richard favored a small place selling barbecued pork. He'd buy a half pound or so and get them to chop it into small pieces to go, so he and Aki might enjoy an ambulatory breakfast, nibbling on bits of pork from a paper sack as they took in the sights.

While the happy pair embarked on various moveable San Francisco feasts, an unseen clock kept ticking. Before Richard and Aki could tie the knot in America, she first needed to get a divorce back in Japan. Her husband wanted assurance that Brautigan planned to marry her. To set the wheels in motion, Richard Hodge sent a telegram to Japan, a legal declaration that matrimony was indeed Brautigan's avowed intention. Soon afterward, Akiko returned to Tokyo to fulfill the final legal residency requirements for the dissolution of her marriage.

She checked into room S-805 at the Hotel Okura in the Minato-ku. One of the finest hotels in Japan, the Okura was built on the grounds of the Okura Art Museum. The hotel boasted a traditional Japanese garden and two swimming pools, one for summertime use only. Free to take a dip in either one at her leisure, Aki truly swam laps of luxury. “I'm marrying with someone who has everything,” she said. Richard Brautigan picked up the tab. It came to almost $7,000.

Divorce remained uncommon in Japan. With their strict code of conduct, most Japanese regarded divorce as bringing shame on the family. None of this mattered very much to Akiko, who had defied convention for most of her life. Nor did it matter that in Japan, after almost every marital split-up, no alimony was ever awarded to the departing wife. “So, I give everything to my ex-husband,” Aki said, “because I was working together with him. We bought the house, apartment house. And I left my car to him.”

Akiko believed that she and Richard, with his poet's soul, understood each other completely, united by a great shared passion. The sexy, charming, poetic letters she wrote him almost daily from the Hotel Okura reflected this belief. The very first was in itself a poem, where “one pure white ship / a grand white ship” sailed “slowly—slowly—slowly” toward her new love, her new life.

At the end of August, Aki replied to what she called “the most beautiful letter I ever had in my life!” Her brief note to Richard consisted of only three lines (“I touched you!” she enthused at the start). Her conclusion made it magic, a graphic design taking up half the page. Akiko transformed her final word, “Love,” into an undulating calligraphic wave. Numbers of iconic fish poked their startled heads from the swells, while one beautifully rendered specimen leaped high into the air, twisting with a deft sureness of line suggesting ancient Japanese shodō. Brautigan had for decades rendered crudely drawn fish as a personal hieroglyph. This graceful interpretation of his most potent symbol must surely have moved him.

With Akiko stoking the fires of his imagination, Brautigan began working on a series of short stories about his experiences during his first two trips to Japan. His workday also focused on the design and production of his two forthcoming books. Early in July, he told Helen Brann he wanted an illustration on the front dust jacket's cover of
June 30th
. Richard rejected a purely typographical cover and declined using any quotations on the front of the book.

Brautigan needed immediate help with the cover for
June 30th
and gave Erik Weber a call. Taking the book's title as his cue, Erik suggested using a picture of the departure stamp in Richard's passport, a bold circle with its titular date at the exact center of page, colored red and looking like an ancient Japanese seal. Richard loved the concept. Erik took photos of the page in Richard's passport. They worked up a dummy layout and sent it off to Sam Lawrence.

Akiko's impending arrival gave Brautigan pause for thought. Commitment had never been his strong point, and now he awaited a new bride. “This better work,” his daughter told him sternly. “You better not screw this one up.” Prior to Aki's arrival, Richard went for a long walk with Kitty Hughes along the bluffs above Agate Beach in Bolinas. He was “determined that he was going to make this one work.” At the same time, Brautigan was “really afraid that the marriage would fail.” Kitty felt that he was “girding himself up.” She also thought Richard had a fantasy image of the ideal Japanese woman.

“Wait till you see her,” he exulted. “She has classic Japanese features, like out of an old painting.”

The magic letters from Aki arrived almost daily. The last day of August, she wrote with news of Sadaharu Oh's 755th career home run. (“BANZAI!!!”) The next day, her letter radiated pure happiness. “It's September! It will be the most exciting month for ever.” Akiko said she'd put a handmade calendar up on the wall of her hotel room so she could check off the dates one at a time (“the days are disappearing day by day”) until the hour arrived for her to fly to America. To get things ready for his fiancée, Richard traveled up to Montana. While a hired cleaning crew freshened the Pine Creek house, Brautigan visited friends, giving away inscribed copies of his new novel.

All along, Helen Brann had been after Brautigan to get the descriptive copy for
June 30th
to Seymour Lawrence. Helen mailed Sam the catalog copy after Richard read it to her by phone. He called it his “most intimate book” and identified himself as “one of America's most popular poets.”
Brautigan had Helen fill in the blank when he dictated, “There are ___________ copies in print of Richard Brautigan's three previous books of poetry.” His agent did the math: 600,022.

Brautigan received finished hardcover copies of
Babylon
early in September. He inscribed one (“This copy is for Ron and Kitty Loewinsohn”) while having dinner with his friends at their place in Rockridge. After their marriage, Kitty kept her own name, Hughes, but Richard always referred to her as Kitty Loewinsohn.

Akiko left for San Francisco in the last week of September. Her mother, Fusako Nishizawa, dictated a typewritten letter to Richard on the same day, having unsuccessfully attempted to phone him from the Hotel Okura that morning. “I am feeling such a sadness to lose my precious treasure,” she told her future son-in-law. She asked Richard “to be nice with my daughter” and wished them both “to be very happy together.” It was September 20 all over again for Aki when, far across the international date line, she reunited with Brautigan. The lovers were again in each other's arms.

Richard and Aki began their lives together in the apartment on Kearny Street. Fond of the view, Akiko loved living there. Whenever Brautigan went out, he brought back some small gift for his bride-to-be. Once, he gave her a stuffed cloth turtle. Aki called it “Tootsie,” Richard's private nickname for her. “He called me Tootsie,” she said, “and I thought this is a tootsie.” Each little offering had its own delicate ceremony, “spiritual or sacred.” When Brautigan bought a bouquet of white daisies, he made sure to place a vivid blue iris at the center. “He was enchanted,” Akiko recalled.

Kitty Hughes met Aki for the first time a couple days after her arrival. “She seemed very shy and retreating,” Kitty recalled. “This sort of submissive Japanese female.” Hughes thought she was a fantasy for Richard, an “image” he had created in his mind. “It became quickly apparent that Aki was in fact quite a strong woman,” Kitty said. “She was very aware of American culture and wanted to come here. She was more complicated than Richard thought.”

Early in September, Brautigan asked Erik Weber to come over to Kearny Street and take some photographs for
June 30th, June 30th
. Akiko had gone out for the afternoon. Erik shot more than a dozen pictures of Richard wearing jeans and a rumpled denim work shirt, some in the apartment, others up on the roof of the building. Combed back off his forehead, Brautigan's shoulder-length hair was obviously receding. In almost every frame, he appeared in tremendous pain, a puzzled, stricken look on his face. Richard grew angry when he looked at the pictures for the first time. “These are terrible,” he said. “I don't want anyone to see these.” Brautigan used no photograph on the cover of
June 30th
. These pictures were the last Erik Weber ever took of Richard Brautigan. Weber mailed Sam Lawrence an invoice for his work on the front cover design for
June 30th
. Before receiving it, Lawrence wrote to Brautigan, “The design for JUNE 30th, JUNE 30th is fabulous. My gratitude to you and to Erik Weber.”